Thought for the week with Rev. Edward Lyons

Published:11:14Friday 02 June 2017

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Jesus said, “Which of you being anxious can add a single hour to his life span?” (Matthew 6). People worry for all sorts of reasons. We can worry about self, family, work or even the nation. We can worry about the past, the present and the future. We can worry about health, wealth and popularity. Even about the impending election.

How are we to overcome this problem of worry? For some people the approach to be taken is very simple. If you have a problem, you remove the problem and then continue on. If you have a splinter in your leg, remove the splinter and continue on. Yet it is not simply that you have removed something is it? You have to add something as well. It is then not so much that we have less of the problem but that we have more of the thing added. With the leg this would be ointment and eventually fresh new skin.

Worry is like this. We can spend untold hours trying to remove the source of the worry which in itself is not wrong, but unless we also add something new then the worry can come back. So what we do in the biological world, we do in the spiritual. We want to not just remove and lessen the cause, but seek to add the solution. We add more of God. More understanding, more worship, more prayer, more trust, more faith. More of the means of grace. Christ has promised to be with us. To pour his Spirit into us and walk with us. When we feel we have no future, we remind ourselves we have because He gives us one. At midnight when we see a candle light, it is all we can see and all around is blackness, but not at midday in the full power of the sun. Worry is the same. It lives in the darkness of our souls. But wait for the morning when the light of the Son outshines it. And the morning is coming.